USAID Launches New Global Development Lab

Exactly how does the global community end poverty by 2030? According to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), it’s by working together.

Today marks the official launch of USAID’s Global Development Lab, a new initiative that uses science and technology to improve global health and development outcomes around the world. Utilizing data and analytics USAID is quickly moving towards more efficient ways to track, report, scale, and improve the ways in which hundreds of millions of people worldwide can plausibly leave poverty behind in 16 years. Poverty is currently calculated as those who live on less than $1.25 a day.

The depth and scale of global poverty obviously requires increased innovative methods to tackle what many attest is an attainable goal by 2030. That is why USAID has brought together leading organizations and foundations from the private sector, universities, as well as corporations to tackle the issue collectively under the wide-reaching umbrella of the development lab.

“We do know things are improving and the interventions that are most cost-effective,” said Karen Cavanaugh, Director, Office of Health Systems at USAID during a recent discussion about global health best buys. “We need to invest in implementation science.”

NGOs like CARE and Save the Children have already become “Cornerstone Partners” that have committed to using their expertise and data driven global programs to join this poverty eradication effort. For example, CARE is already using cell phones to monitor pregnant women in Bihar, India and is helping savings group members in Kenya and Tanzania access their funds.

Corporations such as Coca-Cola and Unilever are lending their consumer-driven insights about scale and distribution of goods to the lab and innovative companies like Microsoft and Intel will likely bring their technology expertise to the table. Thus far, $30 billion in investments have been pledged by the Cornerstone Partners as well as by USAID to bolster the efforts and outcomes of the lab.

USAID is also rallying the most brilliant minds through global challenges, open data, and fellowships to accelerate the rate in which technology and science is used to save and improve more lives.

Today USAID Administrator Raj Shah will give the keynote at the official Global Development Lab launch in New York City. Only months into his administration Shah had already laid the framework for the lab in speeches about the ways in which USAID can advance to save more lives through “embracing innovation, science, technology and research.”

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